The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  “I don’t think it would be much larger with Mordred.”

  “It would be twice as large as it is now. That does not seem like much to you, who have seen the world, but to me, it is everything.”

  “Wynnetha . . .” I hesitated, not knowing how much I could share with her. “I know something of men, and I think you have a better chance of finding happiness with Arthur than with Mordred. Mordred is not as, er, civilized as you might hope.”

  She laughed. “I know that. That’s the role of a wife, though, isn’t it? I can shape him to be more as I want. He’s only rough because he has not been married.”

  “Marriage doesn’t work that way. You won’t change him.”

  “Maybe you have not changed your husband, but I assure you, I will change mine to suit me. You have not heard the pretty things he says to me already or how he seeks my comfort at every chance. He is behaving as a perfect husband, and I shall correct him if he fails in that. But Arthur?” She sat up straight and put a stern look on her face. “Very polite. Very serious. Very cold.”

  And yet he’d been so warm and casual with Terix and me. He must hate being married off to a woman not of his choosing, no matter that she was beautiful and full of life. “Will your father listen to your wishes when choosing your husband?”

  Her gaiety was flattened, and she narrowed her eyes. “He promised he would, but he likes Arthur. He likes the idea of me staying here and of the great bear fighting to keep safe all that he has built. He does not want to become a mere vassal of Mordred’s.”

  I had made a promise to myself that I would help her to gain the man of her choice, yet I was now reluctant to fulfill it. I had assumed she would want Arthur. What woman of any sense could want Mordred instead? If she had wanted Arthur, then telling Horsa that Mordred was behind the Wild Hunts might have made all the difference.

  But Wynnetha didn’t want Arthur or the life she would have with him.

  As foul a creature as I felt Mordred to be, he had still managed to charm Wynnetha and to offer her what she wanted. She seemed to step into a dreamland when she spoke of him; she was halfway in love with him already. I hesitated, not knowing what was right. Should I tell her more of his awfulness, to save her from a life with him?

  A selfish part of me wanted to let her float off on her dreams of Mordred, in hopes that it would leave Arthur free. That was foolishness, though; I was only visiting in this land, whereas Wynnetha had her whole life to live here, and she would suffer if she got her wish and married Mordred.

  I swallowed, took a deep breath, and told her that Mordred was behind the Wild Hunts.

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open. And then she laughed. “How clever of him!”

  “It was trickery.”

  “For me. That he should go to such lengths to gain me as his bride! It is a story to tell my grandchildren.”

  “It’s your father’s land he wants.”

  She made a noise and rolled her eyes. “Mordred has more than enough land. What need has he of my father’s? No, he told me that he has heard tales of my beauty, and they have brought him here to seek my hand.”

  “Wynnetha, please, listen to me. He is not what he seems. He is not a kind man, nor is he a good one.” In desperation, I told her what Mordred had done to me, fondling my sex as everyone watched.

  By the time I finished, Wynnetha’s face was no longer smiling. It had turned crimson, and tears shone in her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Wynnetha. I thought you should know that he is not what he appears.”

  She jumped to her feet and glared down at me, all her hurt and anger turning on the one who had brought it. “Whore!” she screeched, and slapped me with all her strength.

  It was a hard hit, stunning me. By the time my vision cleared, she had turned and run into the hall. In the yard, Terix had stopped his tricks and was looking at me in question. So was everyone else.

  I picked up my cithara and bent my head to it, plucking its strings and pretending nothing had happened, though tears burned my eyes. I had tried to help. I could force the issue and tell Horsa of Mordred’s role in the Wild Hunts.

  If I did, I would be taking away Wynnetha’s choice in favor of my own.

  I played my music and tried to convince myself that it was not for me to judge the wisdom of her decision.

  I hear you’ve been making friends,” Maerlin said in Latin.

  I looked up from where I was kneeling behind Daella. I’d just finished arranging her hair in an elaborate Roman coiffure, as I’d once often done for Lydia, Sygarius’s wife. Daella was marveling over the effect in my small bronze mirror, but she stopped to gape wide-eyed at Maerlin. She was still wary of him, and it was easy enough to see why. He made no effort to dispute the rumors about him, nor did he try to please anyone or to engage in the polite civilities that managed—barely—to keep Horsa’s hall of shoulder-to-shoulder adversaries from erupting into rage and violence.

  Add to that his striking eyes, his unusual gold-red hair, and the black tattoos swirling on his neck and arms, and he looked every bit the ancient druid who would shape-shift into an owl and then call up an evil wind to blow you into the next world, all by the light of the moon.

  “A misunderstanding,” I said, sitting back on my heels.

  “Wynnetha is stupid,” Daella said. “Nimia told the truth.”

  Maerlin’s eyebrows rose. “You speak Latin?”

  Daella’s courage failed her under his scrutiny, and she only nodded, her gaze falling away from his penetrating stare.

  “Ambrosius will like that.”

  Daella nodded again.

  “Does that mean we can go with you to Corinium?” I asked, my heart lifting. It had been worrying me that he had made no such offer.

  “Daella is free to go where she pleases; I have no say in it.”

  “An invitation would be welcome.”

  “That is more of a problem. Come, walk with me,” Maerlin said, holding out his hand to help me up.

  I put my hand in his and felt coolness run up the inside of my arm; it was oddly pleasing, like putting one’s hand in a cold stream on a hot day. Goose bumps jumped on the back of my arm as the coolness rose higher, but then I was standing, he released me, and the sensation faded. I met his eyes and saw a flicker of questioning there, as if he had felt the same thing and been surprised by it.

  Together, we walked out into the thin sunlight. Seeing me, Bone lumbered up from where he’d been napping and came alongside me as we walked down a street.

  “We have shadows,” Maerlin said in Phannic.

  I didn’t turn my head. “That’s Daella’s brother, Uern.”

  “And Fenwig, who doesn’t look happy about Uern.”

  I was tempted to look over my shoulder. “That’s a problem. Mordred will wonder why Fenwig’s following me. I don’t want Mordred to know my history.”

  “Which is why I’ve spread the rumor that Fenwig is deranged with love for you and followed you here from Gaul.”

  I choked. “You what?” The thought of stone-faced Fenwig madly in love with anyone was ludicrous. “No one will believe it.”

  “They already do. They saw how tensely you met him and how protective your ‘husband,’ Terix, has been. He and Fenwig exchange glares at every opportunity. Bets are being placed on how soon they come to blows.”

  “Does Fenwig know?”

  A wicked smile pulled at the corners of Maerlin’s mouth. “He wouldn’t play the part so well if he did.”

  I let out a stream of curses borrowed from Terix. I was torn between amusement and feeling sorry for Fenwig for the future embarrassment he’d suffer when he found out. He was a stoic man, but to know that everyone had thought him mooning over me, making a fool of himself by following me across the sea to a foreign land—his dignity would be shattered.

  There
were more pressing things on my mind, though. I took a breath and asked the question I hadn’t had a chance to ask earlier. “Maerlin, are we kin?”

  “All Phanne are.”

  An annoying nonanswer. “How close? Do you know of my mother’s family?”

  He shook his head. “Most likely we share a great-great-grandmother somewhere in our families’ past. It is—or was—a matriarchal tribe.”

  “Was?”

  “Scattered in the wind, as you know.”

  “But there are still Phanne?”

  “Hiding, in the mountains. On islands. Wherever the wind swept them.”

  “And you’ve met them? You’ve seen them?”

  “A very few. I am, of course, an aberration.”

  I blinked at him in question.

  “A man. The Phannic gifts don’t usually fall to male children. Boys are sent to live with their fathers as soon as they are weaned. My mother brought me to mine—Arthur and I shared Claudius as a father—but then he sent for her when I reached puberty and my—difference began to show more strongly. Although I’d always been different from the other children.”

  “Me, too,” I said quietly.

  He looked down at me. “You, too?”

  “For a long time, I didn’t realize the difference was something born in me. I thought it was because of what Sygarius had marked me for.”

  “Which was?”

  I told him of the golden torc and all it had meant. How it had set me apart, how it had made me suffer isolation from common human touch.

  “Sygarius must have sensed it in you,” Maerlin said, thoughtful. “That you were something special that must be protected.”

  “That wasn’t quite his goal.”

  “It’s all part of the same. He sensed that sex with you would be beyond any common joining. I envy you, growing up in such a way.”

  “I was a slave!”

  He waved away the word as if it was a fly. “Better that than to grow up an outcast because no one understands you.” There was a shadow of dark pain in his words. “At least you could blame everyone’s distance on your torc, rather than on your own perverse personality. No one thought you were a freak or a demon’s changeling.”

  I wanted to point out that he’d had his father and mother, a half brother, even a great-uncle on whom to rely for love, but I held my tongue. There was no point in playing a game of who had it worse. Maybe it had been as bad as he said for him. Too odd to fit with “normal” boys but also too odd for the Phanne, by virtue of his gender. He hadn’t belonged anywhere at all.

  At least I’d known I was wanted. And I had Terix.

  I touched Maerlin’s arm lightly. He jerked away in surprise, and I dropped my hand to my side.

  “Have you any idea why Mordred was so eager for us to meet?” he asked, changing the subject, his tone light.

  I shook my head. “Not beyond that he thinks he’ll find an advantage in it. Do you know?”

  He ignored my question. “Fenwig told us you played the role of seer for Clovis and foresaw his crowning as king of the Franks. You have visions?”

  I nodded. “Though I almost never understand them when they happen.”

  A flash of a smile appeared on his lips and vanished as quickly. “We have that in common, then, too.”

  A joyous sympathy rushed through me. He knew what it was like; he was the same. He knows! “I only have the visions when I lose myself in playing the cithara or while . . .”

  “Having sex?”

  I nodded. “But only as long as I’m enjoying myself.”

  “They come to me when I use a weapon.”

  “Not during . . . ?”

  “Then, too. Though not if it’s rote pleasure. I cannot use my hand and force a vision that way. Gods know I’ve tried.”

  I laughed, thinking he was joking. “It would make things easier than trying to find new ways to put a mentula and a cunny together. The things I’ve done . . .”

  “One quickly exhausts the normal variations,” he said, his tone grim. My smile faded as I realized he was serious. “It gets tiresome trying to innovate, and no one seems to appreciate my creativity.”

  I remembered the rumors about Maerlin. Exactly how creative had he gotten in search of visions? How perverse, and at what cost to the women?

  Worse yet, over time, would I become the same—a woman spoken of in whispers, leaving behind a trail of wounded men?

  I thought of Sygarius. Alaric. With a queasy feeling, I realized that I’d already started down that path.

  I wouldn’t count Clovis, though; he had no soul to wound.

  Speaking of visions reminded me of the one I’d had, and I realized he should hear it. Maybe he’d be able to make better sense of it than I could. “On the voyage to Britannia, I had a vision about a stag and a bear,” I said, and told him what I’d seen and why I thought Mordred was the stag. “I’m worried about what it means for Arthur.”

  We had reached the gate in the wall and went through, heading for the old amphitheater. I wanted to look over my shoulder at Fenwig and Uern, to see how they would deal with shadowing us across the open field between the town wall and the amphitheater.

  “I saw a similar vision,” Maerlin said, his gaze turning inward and his voice sounding far away. “I could only guess at who or what the stag was. Arthur is obviously the bear, but which bear? Both?”

  I let him stew in his thoughts as we walked through grass shorn short by grazing sheep. Bone spotted a bird and loped off after it. The movement seemed to stir Maerlin from his musing.

  “There was something astonishing Fenwig said about you, though he was deep in his cups when he said it.”

  “I’ve never known Fenwig to be drunk; it sounds unlike him,” I said, stalling for time. I felt a tingle of alarm at where this might be heading, for there was only one unbelievable tale Fenwig had to share. If the crystal chalice was what Maerlin sought, and he knew of its powers, then Fenwig’s story might have convinced him that I had it.

  “Arthur has a way of leading men where he wants them to go. We wanted to know more about who Fenwig was, and who you were, that he should journey so far on such a quest.”

  “In vino veritas,” I said. In wine the truth.

  We were inside the amphitheater now. It had been built of earth and once likely had wooden bleachers arrayed up its sides. Now sheep dotted green terraces that had once held cheering Romans and Britons. I climbed with Maerlin up to the top, to the place I’d seen the sheep watching our arrival. From our high vantage point, I saw Uern lurking at the gate. I couldn’t see Fenwig.

  Maerlin removed the short burgundy cloak he wore and spread it on the damp grass. “Please, sit.” He sat beside me, forced close by the size of the cloak. “Now they both can keep an eye us.”

  “And that’s good?”

  Again, he ignored my question, following instead his own train of thought. “Fenwig told an astonishing tale about you having your head cut off and then coming back to life.”

  I heaved a dramatic sigh. “It was not cut off.” I was still unsure if I should trust Maerlin about the chalice.

  “He said he saw your spine through the gash in your neck.”

  “I don’t know how it looked to him.”

  “He said that waters rushed from an overflowing fountain, tumbling you across the ground, and when they ceased, you rose, with water dripping from your hair and washing the blood down your gown, and the wound had closed.”

  I shrugged, trying to hide how uncomfortable this was making me. “It’s all a blur.”

  Maerlin put his fingers under my chin—again, that cool pleasure seeped from his touch—and lifted. He pretended to examine my neck, but it was my eyes he was looking into. “You bear no scar.”

  I moved my chin away from his hand. “That should make you doubt his st
ory.”

  “Among the Phanne, there are legends of such healing.”

  “So it’s a Phanne talent, like the visions of the future?”

  “In a way. But to achieve it requires a cauldron, inscribed with our symbols and used according to a ritual whose details are lost to most of us.”

  A cauldron? “Is there only one of these cauldrons?”

  “None is known still to exist, though there are stories. Tales of them being sunk in lakes or rivers or hidden in caves. Or perhaps hidden in plain sight, hung over a hearth and filled with soup.”

  Or perhaps not a cauldron at all but a vase or chalice of crystal, on display in a Christian church. How had my chalice ended up in a church in Soissons, and why had the priests valued it so? What had they known of it? They believed their Christ had risen from the dead . . . A shiver ran down the back of my neck.

  “You’ve seen such a cauldron, haven’t you?” Maerlin asked. “You’ve used it.”

  My shoulders tightened. I looked down into the amphitheater, wishing that Fenwig would appear or Bone would go romping after a sheep, anything that would serve as a distraction. No such luck. The moments of silence stretched on.

  He was better at waiting than I was. “That which you seek,” I finally said, “is such a cauldron?”

  “Yes. And you know where one is.”

  Ah. I saw my sliver of space in which to maneuver. He didn’t know that I had the chalice here, with me. “If I were to tell you what I know of such a cauldron, what would you do for me in return?”

  His eyes crinkled in a satisfied smile that somehow did not feel at all warm. “I will bring you to someone who knows of your mother.”

  “You would use that against me, to bargain?” It felt so cruelly calculating.

  “I would rather not bargain at all. You’re the one who suggested it.”

  I pressed my lips together. He had me there. “You said that inviting me to Corinium was not so easy. Why?”

  He looked surprised. Was it feigned? “Mordred, of course. My guess is that he hopes to use you as a hostage. He’s waiting now to see if you matter to me. An invitation to take you with us would show him that you do; he’d spring his trap.”